Ali VelshiCNN's Chief Business Correspondent2016-11-17T20:13:15Zhttp://alivelshi.com/feed/atom/WordPressAli Velshihttp://alivelshi.com/?p=19432014-04-23T14:24:17Z2014-04-21T14:23:55ZNEW YORK – (April 21, 2014) – Al Jazeera America announced that beginning today, Monday, April 21, the channel has expanded “Real Money with Ali Velshi” to one hour, in order to better serve viewers with clear, comprehensible business reporting during the election year and go in-depth into under-reported business stories and economics issues Americans most care about.

“Real Money” host Ali Velshi tracks the day’s most important money news and hot-button issues for many Americans, including the economy, jobs, wages, healthcare, housing and more. In addition, “Real Money with Ali Velshi” will go beyond the headlines and profile Americans impacted by today’s economy. Throughout the year, Velshi and his team will follow three middle-class American families as they work to reach their financial goals: the Sabino family of Long Island, New York; the Williams family from the suburbs of Chicago, and the Bowlin family from Knoxville, Tennessee.

“We’re pleased to expand Ali’s show to one hour and also deepen the conversation about money and the middle class, an important area of concern for many Americans,” said Kate O’Brian, President of Al Jazeera America. “Ali’s experience delivering relatable and accessible money news allows us to strengthen our coverage of important issues in the American economy.”

“The prosperity of the middle class is a critical issue that affects the prosperity of our nation as a whole,” said Velshi. “Our goal is to shed a light on the needs of millions of Americans – not only by looking at Washington and policymakers, but by talking to real families and Americans experiencing economic struggles.”

Some upcoming highlights on “Real Money with Ali Velshi” include:

Today, Monday, April 21, “Real Money” will begin a four-part series that will examine high-frequency trading and explain its impact on regular investors who contribute to retirement accounts.

On April 28, “Real Money” will launch a weekly segment that will detail the struggles of three middle-class families as they try to reach their financial goals. The “Real Money, Real People” segment will discuss a challenge being faced by one of the families, or dive deep into an issue inspired by them.

In May, “Real Money” will turn its focus to the topic of fracking and analyze its economic implications on middle class income.

Earlier this year, Velshi opened the dialogue about the plight of the middle class with a special one-hour program: “AMERICA’S MIDDLE CLASS – REBUILDING THE DREAM,” with guests such as Suze Orman, Robert Reich, Robert Shiller and James Hoffa Jr. giving their perspectives on what needs to be done to help find a solution.

Ali Velshi is host of Al Jazeera America’s “Real Money with Ali Velshi,” a one-hour business show airing from Al Jazeera America’s New York studio. The show airs Monday-Saturday 7pmET/4pmPT; 2:30amET/11:30pmPT; and 8:30amET/5:30amPT. Velshi joined Al Jazeera America from CNN where he served as CNN’s chief business correspondent, anchor of CNN’s “International’s World Business Today” and the host of CNN’s weekly business roundtable “Your Money.”

Al Jazeera America is available in more than 51 million homes in the U.S. on Comcast, Time Warner Cable, DirecTV, Dish Network and Verizon FiOS. To find Al Jazeera America in your area, visit www.aljazeera.com/getajam.

About Al Jazeera America

Al Jazeera America is the new U.S. news channel that provides both domestic and international news for American audiences. It is headquartered in New York City with bureaus in 12 cities across the United States.

It seems the billionaire Silicon Valley venture capitalist hadn’t gotten it out of his system after calling attention, in what turned out to be the most-read letter-to-the-editor in Wall Street Journal history, “to the parallels of fascist Nazi Germany and its war on its ‘one percent,’ namely its Jews, to the progressive war on the American one percent, namely the “rich.”

Weird. One might think unseemly. But he wasn’t done. In the same January 24th letter, he warned of, “’progressive radicalism”, which he described as “a rising tide of hatred of the successful one percent.” Perkins continued: “This is a very dangerous drift in our American thinking. Kristallnacht was unthinkable in 1930; its descendant ‘progressive’ radicalism is unthinkable now.”

Kristallnacht, the “Night of the Broken Glass” took place in Nazi Germany in 1938. In one night across the Third Reich, Jews were rounded up; many of whom were killed. More than 7,000 Jewish-owned businesses were damaged or destroyed, along with more than 1,000 synagogues. Yeah, Tom, Occupy Wall Street is a whole lot like Kristallnacht.

Most thinking folks dismissed Perkins comments as the ranting of a publicity-seeking billionaire gone bonkers. The venerable firm he founded, Kleiner Perkins Caulfield and Byers, tweeted: “Tom Perkins has not been involved in KPCB in years. We were shocked by his views expressed today in the WSJ and do not agree.” Perkins response to the tweet? “They threw me under the bus.”

Given one of several chances to clarify his remarks, Perkins doubled-down on his attacks on the poor at an event in San Francisco on February 13th, saying that “the extreme progressivism of the tax system” is a form of persecution of the top one percent of earners in America. When asked by Fortune’s Adam Lashinsky how he’d remedy the situation, he offered this solution: “You don’t get the vote if you don’t pay a dollar in taxes. But what I really think is it should be like a corporation. You pay a million dollars, you get a million votes.”

I don’t know Tom Perkins – though I’ve read his wife Danielle Steele’s novels – so it’s easy for me to discount his views as outlandish. I do know Kevin O’Leary, of Shark Tank fame, which makes it tough for me to slough-off something he said on the daily CBC show he co-hosts with my old friend Amanda Lang. On the January 21st edition of “The Lang and O’Leary Exchange”, O’Leary and Lang were discussing a recent OXFAM report which stated that the world’s 85 richest people hold the same amount of wealth as the poorest half of the planet’s population. O’Leary said: “This is a great thing because it inspires everybody, gets them motivation to look up to the one per cent and say, ‘I want to become one of those people, I’m going to fight hard to get up to the top.’ This is fantastic news and of course I’m going to applaud it. What can be wrong with this?”

It may not be flat out #winning to be poor, but it’s actually pretty good, according to Nicole Miller co-founder and CEO Bud Konheim. Konheim told CNBC that the poor should stop complaining, because: “we’ve got a country that the poverty level is wealth in 99 percent of the rest of the world… the guy that’s making, oh my God, he’s making $35,000 a year, why don’t we try that out in India or some countries we can’t even name. China, anyplace, the guy is wealthy.”

I can’t really decide whether any of these are actually attacks on the poor. Perkins framed it as an attack BY THE POOR on the wealthy, O’Leary pointed out how lucky the poor are, and Konheim wants America’s poor to think they’re not poor because, compared to low income Indians and Chinese, they’re not.

America is not India. It’s not China. America is the biggest and most prosperous nation in the world. We’re debating raising the federal minimum wage to $10.10 an hour, from the current $7.25 an hour. If you work 40 hours a week earning the federal minimum wage, you earn about $15,000 a year. The left-leaning Economic Policy Institute says raising it to $10.10 would eventually help more than 20 million Americans. Conservatives argue raising the wage will hurt small businesses and keep them from hiring workers. Both sides have valid arguments.

Leaving that debate aside, let’s look at income which, for our purposes, includes what you earn from work, and what you earn from capital gains, dividends from stocks and interest from bonds. U.S family income roughly doubled from the late 1940s to the early 1970s for almost all Americans. But, starting in the 1970s, income began growing much faster for the top five percent of earners, than for people in the middle or bottom. For the top one percent, their after-tax incomes jumped more than 200 percent between 1979 and 2010. For most Americans, wages make up the vast majority of their income, as opposed to income from investments and wages, adjusted for inflation, have declined nearly six percent for the lowest earners between 1979 and 2012. Over the same time 23-year period, wages jumped nearly 40 percent for people in the top five percent.

Let’s look at this one more way: total wealth, which includes everything someone owns, including their home, stocks and bonds. As of 2010, the top one percent of households owned 35.4 percent of all privately held wealth; the next 19 percent owned 53.5 percent. That means that just 20 percent of Americans owned a whopping 89 percent, leaving only 11 percent of the wealth for the bottom 80 percent. More starkly, the richest 400 people in the U.S. have more wealth than the poorest 150 million. It makes sense when you think about it, because wealth begets wealth. If you started 2009 with money to invest in stocks or property, and the ability to get credit at some of the lowest rates in history, this has been one of the best five-year periods in history for you. If you started 2009 broke or unemployed, it may still feel like a recession to you.

Perkins, and his fellow uber-rich, need to comprehend that there is no war on the rich in America. The middle and lower classes are too busy working for their increasingly elusive piece of the “American Dream” to be waging war on anyone. Society’s top earners control wealth, wages and political power. If there is class warfare, the rich are the only ones with the disposable time and income to wage it. Historically, America’s had strong, growing and empowered middle class to work as a buffer; folks who work hard and earn money, but not enough to avoid paying most taxes. We’re losing that in America and, along with it, the dream of millions of Americans of making it into the middle class.

If the rich realized the implications of it, they’d be mad as hell, too.

]]>0Ali Velshihttp://alivelshi.com/?p=18942013-05-30T15:32:56Z2013-05-28T15:29:02ZThe latest audience survey, conducted in February among 4,000 Americans aged 18-64, underscored cable TV segmentation trends unfolding for years. The national survey of news consumption habits (paid for by networks and channels, generally for use in ad sales) confirmed facts that many outside the television news industry might find surprising. For example, the average cable news viewer is in his or her sixties. It’s not hard to explain when you realize that the younger audience has grown up on greater choice, not just in terms of the number of hyper-specific channels available to them, but because they can time shift, watch video on demand, and get much of their news and analysis on their tablets or phones. Scheduled news, and current affairs programming is left to those who still like to get their information from an anchor or host they know on a channel they trust at a particular time, and on an actual TV. But that audience is shrinking and aging at the same time.

Cable news networks are at a loss for how to cope with waning viewership. Getty Images/Rob Kim

Younger audiences don’t make as clear a distinction about the source of the information. They need to trust it as much as an older viewer does but, to them, the distinction between mainstream and new, non-traditional news sources is fading.

What hasn’t changed is the idea of choosing a curator for your news and information. It’s why Oprah Winfrey and Barbara Walters and Walter Cronkite reached the heights they did. News and current affairs shows, like museums, have more inventory than they can possibly put on display in their allotted time, so they choose the things they think viewers will want most. Audiences sign up for the shows they think curate most closely to their own tastes.

The aforementioned study revealed that 105 million Americans identify themselves as “news consumers.” Certainly, there is a margin of error based on what Americanssay they want to watch and what they actually watch. Nonetheless, nearly half of respondents complain of being “underserved” by existing TV news and information offerings. That represents about 49 million viewers—and a major opportunity for whomever can figure out how to give them what they want. So the survey went deeper, to gain a specific understanding of what the disaffected felt they weren’t getting.

They want less celebrity

And they’re not talking about the hosts. Chief among the complaints was the intense focus and time cable news and information shows spent on celebrity. What makes this interesting is that the 49 million “underserved” are an average 41 years old, considerably younger than the average cable news viewing audience. They like celebrities and entertainment news; they just don’t want their general news sources obsessing about them at the expense of other important and useful stories. A common complaint was that “news” gets bumped for content that could just as well reside on entertainment focused channels and websites. This refers to Justin Bieber and Lindsay Lohan, sure but a news story like Jodi Arias represents a subset of the frustration: the creation of celebrity out of trials. The disaffected felt it wasn’t necessary to see her trial play out on cable day to day.

They want less extremism

While more than 50% of the respondents thought what existed on cable TV was just fine, a large proportion lamented what they see as a growing focus on ideological rifts. In fact, they think that cable TV encourages those rifts by giving voice to ideological positions not most representative, but most outrageous. A common theme here is that the disaffected viewers, who were generally political moderates, did not see themselves or their views fairly represented in cable TV debates about important issues. They feel that extremism crowds out useful solutions-based discussions. Make no mistake: This is about more than just Fox News. Fox viewers tend to really like the channel, and don’t fall into the disaffected category. They are also the oldest of the old viewers and least likely to have complaints or want change.

They want a clear delineation between information and opinion

Perhaps the most serious concern, and the one most responsible for driving this disaffected audience from TV to the digital world, is the blurring of the line between news and commentary. While a majority of those surveyed enjoy anchors with passion and integrity, the study found many averse to hosts expressing overtly politically partisan opinions, particularly if the fact that they are commentators, rather than journalists, is not clearly signposted. Don’t mistake this for the 46% wanting dull or middle-of-the-road views; they crave both multiple mainstream sides to a story, and alternative viewpoints. But they feel they can’t get that breadth from moderators who’ve already decided which side is right. This group welcomes informed criticism of political positions, when they’re placed in context and supported by analysis. But unabashed partisanship has turned many of them away from cable news entirely.

They want more context, analysis and depth

Finally, the study found that the underserved viewer craves greater context and depth. They want cable news media to investigate and uncover, not just to tell them what happened and show them pictures of it. It’s something local news and broadcast programs have done far better than cable news has in recent years. The 46% stated clearly they want more of what feels like real journalism, rather than “infotainment.” They want real reporting; a more expensive form of journalism than booking a day’s worth of unpaid guests, but the research indicates that doing so may win the loyalty of these viewers.

So what if a channel gave these self-described underserved viewers want? Some do. There are great documentarians and investigative journalists out there, and fantastic shows like 60 Minutes still command impressive audiences. But much of what this audience craves has migrated away from mainstream TV news channels and to independent production houses. What’s replaced it is unsatisfying to the 49 million; it feels like empty calories. And as cable TV has failed them, they’ve changed how and where they get the constant flow of news and information they want, using apps or social networks. The study revealed that these consumers are likely to turn to cable news only for breaking stories, specials, or shows that need to be watched live, or when they air, so that the experience can be shared in real time with family and friends, or the next morning at work.

The task here is to reverse an inevitable trend. That the audience is aging is common, if not readily shared, knowledge in the cable industry. How to turn a younger, smarter, hard-to-reclaim audience back from their phones and tablets to TV is the tough part. In fairness, this 46% of the news consuming audience would have migrated away from TV anyway, in part because they are used to customizing their own content, or having it crowd-curated through social media. It may be too late to try to convince them that their wants and needs can be met by cable, because they’ve learned to live without good old-fashioned TV news. It may not, however, be too late to woo them back to the so called “first screen” (TV), while they continue to use their “second screen” (tablet or phone), by integrating complementary and groundbreaking companion applications, or distinctive mobile-only products that don’t feel like low rent add-ons to the TV viewing experience.

The case is clear: the traditional audience isn’t growing, while the disaffected audience is. A whopping 49 million underserved viewers are asking for something we have the ability to deliver. Passing this opportunity up would be bad for business.

]]>0Ali Velshihttp://alivelshi.com/?p=18742013-05-30T15:33:13Z2013-05-24T14:22:27ZHow does the news get it so wrong?

I’ve spent almost 20 years as a reporter and anchor and have covered more live, fast-breaking stories than I remember. Mistakes happen regularly on cable news because of the inexact and unreliable nature of rolling coverage. But most of the mistakes don’t matter: the exact color of the car, the exact price of the stock, the exact quote from the courtroom. Ultimately, they all get corrected, as rumor and speculation give way to provable fact and hard evidence. Most of the mistakes end up being of little consequence. But the details surrounding the Boston bomber mattered, because the nation was so heavily invested. Americans were on edge, their sense of safety shattered again. Public anxiety was at its height when the news of an arrest first came.

Broadcasting news has never been more difficult; social media is breeding an ever-growing audience expectant of factual and lightning fast reporting. AP Photo/Michael Dwyer

The news, it turns out, was wrong. And this one didn’t fix itself. Mistakes like this happen most frequently when reporters, who take pride in doing their own work, can’t determine the facts alone. Reporters are at their best when they, or their teams, gather news directly from sources. That means interviews, discoveries made from poring over documents, or video that captures the facts. But in unfolding tragedies like post-bombing Boston, being no closer to the action than the general public, reporters depend on information flow from behind official lines.

The problem starts when officials keep tight lipped, officially, but leak a little around the edges. A cop tells an old reporter friend something on the side. Or a cop tells a retired cop who has a friend. Or someone sees a squad car racing to a station with lights and sirens. A game of clandestine phone calls and broken telephone starts where an unrelated suspect halfway across town being put into a police car gets connected to the story you’re covering. Badly-sourced news never starts out as totally wrong information. There’s often something to it, but once it’s in the hands of a reporter, it can take on a life of its own. A life that can change the future of the reporter handling it. There’s information staring you in the face. Could be right. Could be wrong. Could be the biggest scoop anyone covering this story has. And, for a precious few minutes—maybe just a few seconds—it’s yours and yours alone.

That’s where “sources,” people in the know with whom a reporter has established a relationship of trust, become crucial. Live coverage demands endless talk that can become repetitive and create a speculation-friendly environment. When reporters need details to pass on to a hungry audience, we turn to people who may, through their station or influence or contacts, have real information.

But in the heat of the moment, it’s hard as a reporter to know why someone just gave you the information you got, even if you asked for it. We’re used to being stonewalled even when we know we have good information. Your compass for truth and honesty is set off by all the noise around you, including on social media. Helpful as it is to get tips and scoops and check information, Twitter is merciless in punishing you when you’re lagging your competition, and ruthless if your information is imperfect.

Processes exist at all major news organizations to prevent reporting errors but, in live, fast-moving situations—fed by hysteria and fueled by thousands of tweets-per-second—sober thought and quiet examination of the veracity of one’s sources can take second place to getting the news out fast. This is particularly the case if the information has more than a passing chance of being accurate. It is especially likely if others are reporting similar stories (even if the source of the reporting is YOUR reporting). It’s not good, but it happens. Thankfully, it happens very rarely.

But when it happens, it’s big, and it’s crushing. Attacks were swift and cutting—and personal—on social media, from media critics and on the comedy shows. If major mistakes happened so rarely, that’s the defense you’d have heard. But they happen with alarming frequency. The “Crowd,” in front of their televisions and on their smartphones, is making us move faster, demanding updates and developments. We’ve done it before. We can do it again. Can’t we?

Having just left CNN after 12 years, I was disconnected from a newsroom environment for the first time in my career while the bombing and its aftermath unfolded. Like many others, I followed the post-marathon bombing developments on TV, on news sites, on blogs and on Twitter. Being a news consumer, rather than a provider, proved more difficult than I expected. I struggled to make sense of endless bits of disconnected and, ultimately, often untrue information. Asked if he shared my concern that big news mistakes had become worse, MSNBC anchor Richard Lui postulated that, given the increases in both the quantity and appetite for live breaking news coverage, the number and impact of mistakes still feels small.

Accuracy is always supposed to trump speed in reporting, but it’s hard to be the last to report a major development. It’s hard in this hyper-competitive market to even be second. Regularly being first wins you awards and accolades and audiences. But being wrong is, at best, a hard kick in the gut. At its worst, it can cost a journalist his or her career and an organization its credibility. Whether or not you tweet at us about it, we journalists actually do understand that being right is all that should matter. That’s never clearer than right after we’ve made a big mistake.

]]>0Ali Velshihttp://alivelshi.com/?p=17542013-05-17T14:15:41Z2013-04-04T14:05:57ZAl Jazeera America, the new US-based news channel set to launch later this year, today announced that Ali Velshi, CNN’s former chief business correspondent and anchor of “Your Money” and CNN International’s “World Business Today,” has joined Al Jazeera America to develop and host a daily primetime business program.

Based in New York, the as yet-to-be named 30-minute magazine-style program will initially launch in a weekly format but is expected to move to a five-days-a-week schedule by year’s end. The program will cover a variety of topics including employment, personal finance, healthcare and education and will feature a mix of field reports, studio guests and interactive discussions designed to highlight how economic developments in the U.S. and around the globe affect the daily lives of Americans. The program will draw upon the extensive global resources of the Al Jazeera Media Network and will employ specialists and other correspondents who will lend their expertise.

In making the announcement, Ehab Al Shihabi, executive director of Al Jazeera international operations, said, “We are thrilled to secure Ali’s extraordinary talents and services. Al Jazeera America will be bringing respected, independent reporting to its viewers and that’s exactly the type of coverage Ali Velshi is known for.”

Velshi built his reputation covering breaking news events and politics, as well as global and national issues such as the world financial crisis, the collapse of U.S. financial system and the debt ceiling debate.

“I’m thrilled to be joining Al Jazeera America, an organization that puts quality, fact-based journalism first,” said Velshi. “It’s a tremendous opportunity and I look forward to taking advantage of the extraordinary U.S. news-gathering capabilities the channel is building and working with such a diverse and talented group of colleagues to tell compelling stories that matter to Americans.”

Al Shihabi said that Velshi is exactly the kind of journalist that viewers will be able to find on Al Jazeera America. “As is the case with Ali, all Al Jazeera America reporters will be fiercely objective, substantively strong, and absolutely committed to the truth,” he said.

Al Jazeera America, which will launch in 2013, is the new U.S. news channel that will provide both domestic and international news for American audiences. It will be headquartered in New York City with additional bureaus in key locations across the United States.

]]>0Ali Velshihttp://alivelshi.com/?p=16172013-05-22T02:34:29Z2012-11-13T09:45:19ZAli Velshi talks with Stephen Moore and Mohamed El-Erian about how Congress can come together to avoid looming spending cuts and tax hikes.

]]>0Ali Velshihttp://alivelshi.com/?p=17232013-05-22T02:35:02Z2012-11-09T09:50:32ZAli Velshi talks with Grover Norquist about who has signed his Taxpayer Protection Pledge, and what that means for Congressional compromise.

]]>0Ali Velshihttp://alivelshi.com/?p=17442013-05-17T14:09:29Z2012-02-29T13:13:55ZCNN’s Chief Business Correspondent – or, as Jon Stewart calls him, H-Pod, the Hairless Prophet of Doom – sits down with George to talk about money, his new book, and his Canadian roots.

]]>0Ali Velshihttp://alivelshi.com/?p=15862013-05-22T02:31:25Z2012-01-29T20:55:58ZCNN’s Ali Velshi, on his XYZ, says religious issues distract from the United States’ #1 problem: the economy.

]]>0Ali Velshihttp://alivelshi.com/?p=15742013-05-22T02:30:58Z2012-01-28T06:35:10ZAli Velshi asks Will Cain and Harold Meyerson whether the U.S. economy should be structured to ensure economic equality.